Gender Inequality Behind Bars: The Life Women Inmates in Republican China (1912-1949)

• In Event: Hoping for Some Better Days: Twentieth-Century Chinese Women under Clouds of War, Marriage Strains, Social change and Behind Bars

Abstract

Since the first Chinese modern prison was built (1905), women prisons have largely been neglected, and so was the history of women prison. Although a number of women prisons were established but only one, located in Shanghai, was left after the Second Sino-Japanese War. The much smaller proportion of women to men prisoners (a ratio of 1 to 7) stood to reason the negligence but there was something more. While the Republican government advocated gender equality, this article finds that female criminals were treated differently from their male counterpart. Criminal discourse commiserated and emphasized the sufferings of female inmates. They were often identified as helpless accomplice or victims of poor economy. When amnesty was granted, women inmates were prioritized. When men’s masturbation was seen sinful, it was tacitly approved in female prison cells. The state also encouraged female prisons to replace imprisonment for fines or to release inmates so that they return home and be regulated and educated by their husband. By and large, imprisonment of women inmates was not rigorously executed which might explain the small number of women prisons. This reversal of gender inequality where female prisoners were treated leniently reflects the state’s tenacious grip of China’s traditional belief that women were weaker, more ignorant and less capable than men and female prisoners were not useful to and unwanted by the society.

Author

• Kyung Yeob Claudius Kim, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology